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Leek and Pilchard Pie
Clean and skin the white part of some large leeks, scald them in milk and water, and slice them. Take some salted pilchards which have been soaked for some hours the day before. Put the pilchards and leeks in alternate layers in a pie-dish, and cover over with a good plain crust. Bake in a moderate oven until brown. When done, lift up the side crust with a knife, and empty out all the liquor, then pour in half a pint of scalded cream, and serve.
A Cornish salt-fish pie of the plainest sort, written for cooks who had a barrel of cured pilchards to hand. The two things that decide whether it works are the desalting of the fish and the draining of the liquor before the cream goes in.
- PilchardsA pilchard is an adult sardine, Sardina pilchardus. Salted pilchards are hard to find outside Cornwall and Portugal; salt-cured sardines or lightly salted herring fillets stand in. Fresh sardines will not do without alteration, as the recipe assumes the firm, dense flesh that curing produces.
- Soaking"Soaked for some hours the day before" implies an overnight soak; in practice give it 8 to 12 hours in several changes of cold water, refrigerated. Taste a corner before baking: barrel-cured fish varies enormously in saltness, and the pie has no other seasoning to balance it.
- Bones and headsThe recipe says nothing about preparing the fish. If yours are whole, split them along the backbone and lift out the spine and head; small pin bones can be left in.
- Scalding the leeksScalding in milk and water means bringing them just to the boil and draining, not simmering to softness. It takes the raw bite off and, more importantly, draws out water that would otherwise flood the pastry.
- Moderate ovenConventionally reckoned around 350F, though the term covers roughly 350-375F. For a shortcrust lid over a wet filling it helps to start at 400F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 40 minutes until browned through.
- Draining the liquorThis is the hinge. The leeks and fish throw off a great deal of salty grey liquid, and if it stays in, the cream curdles and the pie tastes of brine. Cut a flap in the side crust, tip the dish over a bowl, and get all of it out.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Scald it — heat to just below boiling — before pouring in, so it does not cool the pie or set into a skin.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a working guide, a 9-inch pie dish will take something like 1 1/2 lb trimmed leeks and 8 to 10 cured fish, which with the half-pint of cream should serve four.
Pilchards were the great cash crop of the Cornish coast: shoals were spotted from the cliffs by a lookout called a huer, seined in vast numbers, then pressed in cellars and salted for export, much of it to Catholic Italy and Spain where salt fish was in constant demand. The pressed and cured fish were known as fumados, and the Cornish name "fair maids" is traditionally explained as a corruption of that word, though the derivation is not certain. What stayed at home was eaten through the winter in pies of this kind. The same tradition produces the better-known stargazy pie, where the fish heads are left poking through the crust. Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s for a middle-class readership, and the presence of a dish like this is a note of how ordinary salted pilchard still was in Victorian Britain, decades before the fishery collapsed and the pilchard was rebranded as the Cornish sardine.